Losing Leads to Load Time: How to Make Your Business Website Load Faster

Do your customers feel like they’re in the 90s when they visit your website? 40% of consumers will leave a page if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load.

If you know your site loads slower than 3 seconds, then you know that
you’re losing leads. You need to learn how to make web pages load
faster.

Continue reading this article to learn how to get your web pages loading faster.

How to Make Web Pages Load Faster – Right Away

Since we want faster websites, why wouldn’t we want to know how to
get quick results so we can fix our pages fast? There are simple fixes
you can do right now that will help your pages load faster, and here
they are:

1. Use the Best Hosting

If you don’t understand website hosting, you may end up picking a
lemon of a web host. When you pick a web host that is slow, it is like
trying to run in peanut butter. No matter how good your shoes are,
you’re still going to be slower than the guy running on land.

When you look at web hosting,
you have shared, VPS and dedicated hosting options. VPS stands for
virtual private server and is like shared hosting and dedicated hosting
had a baby.

With shared hosting, you share resources with other websites. If
other websites are hogging the hosting, your website may lag, and this
causes big problems. Shared hosting is usually okay for very small
websites and is the cheapest option.

Dedicated hosting means that you own or rent the whole server and no
one else has access. This is the safest and fastest server but also the
most expensive if you’re worried about pricing.

When it comes to VPS, a virtual private server is on a shared server,
but you have resources that are only available to you. Since this is a
shared server, it is less expensive than a dedicated server but gives
you the benefits of one.

VPS is a good option if your site is small to medium-sized and you want quick hosting.

2. Use Optimized Images

If you upload high-resolution photos and serve them from your site,
they can take a long time to load. These images bog down your site and
cause serious loading problems. Instead of allowing them to bring your
site down, it is time to optimize.

Depending on what website platform you are on, there are a few
options. If you use WordPress, you can use a plugin that will optimize
the images for you. This is one of the fastest ways and why a lot of
people love WordPress.

You can also decrease image size before uploading to your site which is very helpful. With this method, you can avoid the problem altogether.

3. WP Users – Not So Many Plugins Please

Yeah, that’s right. We were just talking about plugins. Now, plugins are bad?

No, plugins are not bad, but if you use too many, they can cause your
site to load slowly. In some cases, you only need a plug to do a one
time task. You should always remove it if you don’t need it anymore.

Look at the list of plugins on your site and see if there are any you
can do without. The fewer plugins, the more likely it is that your site
will be able to load quickly.

4. Optimize Files

You can optimize your files through gzipping and minification. If you want the best results, you can use the two together.

If you aren’t sure how to do this, you should leave it to a
professional as it could cripple your website if you don’t do it right.

5. Cache, Anyone?

Caching is great for repeat visitor’s website load time. Caching
stores bits of information on your visitor’s browser so the next time
they come to visit, it doesn’t take as long to load.

Since it only works for your repeat visitors, it doesn’t help with
load times for the people that are just discovering your website.

6. Get Rid of Baggage

Do you have photos and files stored on your website and you aren’t
using them? Anything that you have on your website that you don’t need
should be taken off the site.

You don’t want to lag your website with images and other content that
isn’t serving you or your visitors. If you don’t have time to go
through everything, you can hire someone to find and delete all of the
images and other files that aren’t being used.

7. CDN is a Must

A CDN is a content delivery network. This piece of the puzzle can be
confusing at times, but I am going to break it down very simple.

Your website is hosted in a specific location.

Let’s say that the location is Dallas, Texas. You have visitors from
all over the world. If a visitor in Russia goes to access your website,
they have to wait for the information to get to them all the way from
Dallas.

If you use a CDN, the CDN stores your website on multiple servers all
around the world. When a query comes from anywhere in the world, it
determines the location. When it determines the location, it then looks
for a server that is closest to that location and serves it up.

While this sounds like a lengthy process, computers are extremely fast, and it happens very quickly.

Get the Help You Need Today

If you’re trying to learn how to make web pages load faster, then
you’re either a webmaster working to hone your skills or trying to learn
how to work on your site.

Whether you’re a professional or an amateur, we understand these things can be frustrating.

Our business is to make your business easy. We are here to help you make your online business run as smoothly as possible. Contact us today, ask questions and let us help you move your business forward.

OSO Web Studio is a Danbury, CT based web design, branding, and digital marketing agency that offers professional business digital marketing solutions to companies of all sizes and across various industries. We just short drive away from New York City, and cater to all of New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts.